Vinay Express, Film Review-Naval Kishor Vyas. It would have been better just to take the basic plot and the center character of the movie ‘Forest Gump’ and the whole script and other characters would have been new, but it seems as if the writer-director of the movie ‘Laal Singh Chaddha’ Indianized the magical characters, their tensions, events, emotions, and symbols like a world-for-world translation, by replacing the chocolate box with golgappa. Now! it is acceptable to appreciate any Sher of Galib in the mehfil only, if it is commendable, but if someone wants to write a new Sher with the same Behar , they have to not only decorate that Sher according to the prestige of Galib but also maintain the legacy, band, khyal, kafia. Unfortunately ‘Laal Singh Chaddha’ missed all of these basic necessities. In the process of Indianization, the movie, Laal Singh Chaddha, presents a caricature of ‘Forest Gump’.
Moreover, the biggest problem with this movie is Amir Khan himself. He failed in understanding and adopting the real character of Forest Gump. Amir should have shown the junior actor, who played the childhood role of Lal Singh. His innocent, truthful face was the real character of Gump, which Amir ruined with his facial-artificiality, unnecessary grunting, wide-open astonished eyes and typical expressions. This is typical of Amir in this type of character. It was quite an effort seeing Amir for the third time with these same expressions after Dhoom and PK. Another aspect the movie is lacking in is the continuous relevance of all the other characters except for Amir and Karina.
These small characters have not been given the due expansion and relevance according to Indian society. The characters played by Naga Chaitanya and Manav Vij are not organically developed and this made the friendship between the tow characters fake. Replacing the shrimping business with a ‘chaddi-bnyan ka business’ is again a blunder. Except for three to four main characters, the rest find it very difficult to make their position in the movie. Though some of these small characters are a given chance in the scene of a college race, which of course gives the movie a little flow. These are some basic anomalies which typically we don’t see in Amir’s movies.
He makes all his movies with great efforts and hard work and balances emotions and entertainment in the right amount. He makes effective intervention in each aspect of a movie. It is hard to comprehend how a perfectionist who can go to real locations for a ten-minute shot, missed these basic anomalies. Being ‘the perfectionist of India’, he is hard to be accepted this way.
If you are an admirer of ‘Forest Gump’, watching ‘Laal Singh Chaddha’ is like listening to Nusrat’s qawwali from Anu Malik or Himesh Reshamiya or like reading a classic novel from Google Translator.
Author: विनय थानवी
